Rail union plans Doncaster railway station protest

Darren Burke

Rail union RMT is to stage a protest at Doncaster railway station this weekend.

Officials will stage a string of protests along the length of the East Coast Main Line to mark the last day of the route being in public ownership.

A spokesman said: “RMT has organised a series of protests to mark the final day of its operation in the public sector as the Government dumps it back into the laps of the private-sector from March 1 despite its financial and performance success as a public service and in the face of two previous, grotesque private failures that took the inter-city route to the brink of collapse.”

The protest will take place between 9am and 10am.

Protests will also take place at London King’s Cross and Edinburgh Waverley.

RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: “Six years ago the East Coast Main Line collapsed into chaos when National Express threw the keys back because they couldn’t extract enough profit. That followed an earlier spectacular private sector failure on the line when Sea Containers went bust. It was left to the public sector to not only rescue this vital North/South rail link from total meltdown but to turn around its performance and to start handing hundreds of millions of pounds back to the taxpayer in contrast to the rip-off private companies.

“This weekend, in an act of gross national betrayal of the British people that will cost us dear, the route is being handed over to Virgin/Stagecoach to be run again solely in the interests of private profit, taking a third gamble after the two previous corporate failures.

“This re-privatisation is based on pure, hard-right, Thatcherite ideology and is an act of industrial vandalism that will smash apart Britain’s most successful rail company for just one reason – it is publicly owned.

“On Saturday RMT will mark this latest scandal on Britain’s privatised railways and the union will renew the fight to return the entire network to public ownership – a policy supported by 70% of the British people.”